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Devilmarkus · 01:36, 11 February 10

I really find this discussions about "destroying" PC hardware by connecting a floppy-drive to it very amusing...

(did you ever connect a floppy cable wrong sided and did your PC burn then?)

Think otherwise:
In the 80s many people had a CPC 464 with DDI-1 Floppy-Controller.
About 60% of them connected a Amiga- or PC floppy to it and had fun with 3,5" floppy on their CPC.

So, why not connect a 3" drive to PC?
The DDI-1 controller has the same pins than your PC FDC! Only because the disk itself is 3" ?!!?

The only thing you should regard is to disconnect the 5v plug coming from 3" drive's power supply.

arnoldemu · 10:49, 11 February 10

Quote from: Devilmarkus on 01:36, 11 February 10
I really find this discussions about "destroying" PC hardware by connecting a floppy-drive to it very amusing...

(did you ever connect a floppy cable wrong sided and did your PC burn then?)

Think otherwise:
In the 80s many people had a CPC 464 with DDI-1 Floppy-Controller.
About 60% of them connected a Amiga- or PC floppy to it and had fun with 3,5" floppy on their CPC.

So, why not connect a 3" drive to PC?
The DDI-1 controller has the same pins than your PC FDC! Only because the disk itself is 3" ?!!?

The only thing you should regard is to disconnect the 5v plug coming from 3" drive's power supply.

You do have to be careful but with the POWER as Markus says. If you connect this wrong way goodbye to your disc drive and send it for metal recycling

putting the cable in the wrong way is normally ok, I've done it many times. If the disc drive light stays on (on the pc) you've got it the wrong way around!

Doktor · 20:29, 11 February 10

@ Devilmarkus: I agree with everything you wrote, but you know - something could always go wrong...

Cholo · 17:34, 15 February 10

Here is a quick drawing of how it looks inside a FD1, with the 3 major plugs i spotted:

So what plug needs to be unplugged before hooking up to a pc? and is it the whole plug or just one cable?

Devilmarkus · 02:02, 16 February 10

Quote from: Cholo on 17:34, 15 February 10
So what plug needs to be unplugged before hooking up to a pc? and is it the whole plug or just one cable?

Normally this:

It's the smallest plug with only 2 wires. (red / black)
It powers the DDI1 controller with 5v.

(you can power the DDI1 also from CPC side. Simply shorten the contacts of C115)

Cholo · 21:38, 16 February 10

Quote from: Devilmarkus on 02:02, 16 February 10
...
It's the smallest plug with only 2 wires. (red / black)
It powers the DDI1 controller with 5v.

(you can power the DDI1 also from CPC side. Simply shorten the contacts of C115)

Cool, im gonna give it a tryout tomorrow, thanks

(ive tried it before but i didnt unplug anything back then).

Devilmarkus · 08:54, 18 February 10

Quote from: Cholo on 21:38, 16 February 10
Cool, im gonna give it a tryout tomorrow, thanks (ive tried it before but i didnt unplug anything back then).

Hmmm this should also work when you don't unplug the connector.
It's only for safety.

Cholo · 18:57, 18 February 10

Quote from: Devilmarkus on 08:54, 18 February 10
Hmmm this should also work when you don't unplug the connector.
It's only for safety.

Indeed, it also worked before i pulled the plug too.

Most importent thing i think is to set the bios right before you even hook the drive up.

And Cpcdiskxp really make this one easy to use on modern pcs.

Cholo · 16:31, 19 February 10

Quote from: Cholo on 18:57, 18 February 10
And Cpcdiskxp really make this one easy to use on modern pcs.

Well, near-modern pcs then. Looks like my new Vista machine dosnt support 5.25" drives in the bios. Or can it be that the American Megatrend bios automaticly checks what drive is attacted now?
Anyone else tried this setup without manually changing the bios?

Bryce · 16:35, 19 February 10

There's no hardware way of checking what type of disk drive is connected, so the BIOS won't doing a "check what disk is attached" test. If the BIOS doesn't offer the option, then it doesn't support 5.25". Which doesn't really suprise me, some newer boards don't have any floppy support anymore

Bryce.

Cholo · 12:48, 20 February 10

Well, i does make sense since everybody probably uses a usb floppy if they really need to use floppies. Guess im a bit lucky that my new pc does have the 3.5" support at least (so i can still do 3.5" direct accessing as needed by cpcdiskxp. Looks like it only supports one drive too (no A and B drive options) so i wont be able to read amiga floppies either (Disk2fdi need 2 drives to be able to trick the pc).

Good that i still have the "old" xp machine too then.

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